John Steffler, in The Afterlife of George Cartwright (McClelland & Stewart) goes after the big stuff in a richly imagined account of an eighteenth-century Englishman who sets up in business in Labrador. There is some terrific writing and real imagining in here, and with this book Labrador might be said to enter into literature—but for one, very nearly fatal, flaw: the central device in the story is the ghost of Cartwright himself, riding around modern England like Ichabod Crane's headless horseman, trying to remember the past. Corny, pompous and very embarrassing. Where, when we need them so much, are editors with nerves of steel?